Tag: Ryanair

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Hungary's Malev Shuts Down after 66 Years, LCCs Rush In

February 6, 2012 at 1:56 PM | by | Comments (0)

Hey, remember when journalists started weirdly declaring that everything was fine with the airline industry? And then travelers took that to mean that good times were here again while the government swooped in with expensive new regulations? And then remember how American Airlines went bankrupt and then Spanair shut down and then Hungary's Malev shut down? Good times.

There's not much to say about this latest casualty of the global economic crunch. Hungary really, really wanted to keep Malev operating, with the government declaring the airline to be a "priority objective." But they just couldn't make the carrier viable—specifically, they couldn't convince suppliers that the government would be able to pay them for services—and thus ended the Malev's 66 years of almost continuous service. Sad.

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Lots of New Cities and New Routes from Porter, Peach, and Air Asia X

January 13, 2012 at 10:18 AM | by | Comments (0)

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of all the new route announcements that come our way, so we’ve complied a little bit of a rundown below. As long as you can afford the fares, this should definitely help add to your passport stamp collection.

· Porter Airlines:
This week the Canadian carrier announced that they’ll be doing their thing back and forth between Washington-Dulles International Airport and their home base at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The new flights start on April 16 and will run three times each week, and we really need to get with the program and fly with them before 2012 is over!

· Air Asia X:
They’re on the move again, and this week brings a new option between Kuala Lumpur and Sydney thanks to the folks over at Air Asia X. It sounds like the airline is putting the final touches and plans on the new city pair, and flights begin April 1. Tickets could go on sale as soon as like next week. Air Asia X needs like a few more days to shake things out so just stay tuned.

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The Naughtiest Flight Attendants of 2011 Are...

December 30, 2011 at 9:03 AM | by | Comments (0)

It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.

Each and every year there are plenty of naughty flight attendants getting into trouble, and it usually involves wearing something a little bit different from the company-issued uniform, or not wearing something at all. This year, Canadian flight attendants stripped for their Turbulence Calendar of 2012—nice, eh—and of course getting frisky in the cockpit is sure to get you on Santa’s naughty list. However, when the final votes were tallied we just had to give out this year’s naughtiest flight attendants award to the high-flying ladies of Ryanair.

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The Most Ridiculous Travel Idea of 2011 Is...

December 29, 2011 at 3:05 PM | by | Comments (0)

In 2008 we favorably covered the efforts of American Airlines flight attendants who were trying to block airplane wifi from showing porn. In 2009 we disgustedly called out in-flight porn reading on our "Top Ten Gross Things People Do On Airplanes" list. In 2010 we specifically chastised Democratic Representative John Conyers for flipping through a Playboy while sitting in couch.

Apparently none of that helped. 2011 was the year when in-flight porn viewing—enabled by technological innovation and monetized by some of the most obnoxious companies in the travel industry—broke into the mainstream. Ryanair used iPad porn as a publicity stunt and Qantas started screening an explicit guide to the female orgasm.

And so we're declaring airline-sponsored in-flight porn, which is frankly pervy beyond belief and seems to be catching on, to be the Most Ridiculous Travel Idea of 2011.

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EasyJet Will Assign You That Seat, Thank You Very Much

November 21, 2011 at 1:44 PM | by | Comments (0)

On one hand, EasyJet shows all the signs of being an ultra-budget LCC. The airline isn't as obnoxious about their exorbitant fees and/or lack of services as Spirit Airlines or Ryanair, but they did pointedly ring up Prince Harry on a bunch of fees the last time he flew with them. They even charged him extra for checking through his green army bag, which was issued to him while he was serving in Afghanistan, among other places. Thoroughly charming.

On the other hand, the British airline has made a number of moves implying that they want to be something more than a "frugal LCC" also-ran. They've led the way on genuinely innovative features like offering in-flight trip insurance, and they were the first UK commercial airline to coat their planes with nano-paint so they could fly more efficiently.

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Ryanair Now Giving Interviews on Mountain Goats and Porn

November 9, 2011 at 4:42 PM | by | Comments (0)

If you were going to do a chart of all the obnoxious ways that Irish LCC Ryanair tries to get media attention, first of all it would be an awkwardly large chart. Second, it would have to cover - at a minimum - the ads that are tasteless, the ads that are sexist, the ads that are sexist and tasteless. Then you would have to cover their heavy-handed intentionally sensational "news" announcements, which usually revolve around things they're never going to do and almost always involve bodily fluids. So bathroom fees and toilets, mostly.

Sex and pee pee. That's what their PR people usually bring to the table. And now, a new bodily fluid to add the chart: semen! How innovative. How risque.

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Ryanair Flight Attendants Strip Down to Lingerie for 2012 Charity Calendar

November 3, 2011 at 10:15 AM | by | Comments (0)

It's that time of the year! When pop-up mall kiosks are chock-full of shiny, shrink-wrapped new calendars for the the next year and Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair asks their flight attendants to strip to join the selection. Yes, the 2012 Girls of Ryanair charity calendar is now on sale.

This is the fourth year Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has sold the calendar, which features 13 cabin crew (of nationalities Irish to Italian) wearing little more than skimpy bras and panties—underwear we highly doubt they regularly sport beneath their Ryanair uniforms. But that's not the point! The point is supposed to be that Ryanair employs hotties, and booking a Ryanair ticket comes with a chance to interact with these girls up close while en route to a long weekend on in Lanzarote.

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The Special Ryanair Welcome at Bari Airport

Where: Bari, Italy
October 28, 2011 at 1:16 PM | by | Comments (0)

Now, we know you always get, uhh, different treatment on a Ryanair flight but, when we arrived at Bari Airport in Italian region of Puglia fresh off our recent flight, this is not what we were expecting to find.

A heath checkpoint solely for Ryanair passengers? A health checkpoint sponsored by Ryanair? A sanity test for the unfortunates disembarking from O'Leary-jet?

We didn't dare ask, lest we be subjected to the health check. And since we were unfortunate enough to be flying with British Airways, we didn't get to test it out, either. Maybe next time.

At least there's something that made us happy to be flying BA.

[Photo: Jaunted]

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After Mind-Blowing Safety Lapse, Ryanair Promises Massive Expansion with Help of 'Cheap' Planes

October 26, 2011 at 4:24 PM | by | Comments (0)

There are two airline industry news stories about Irish LCC Ryanair floating around this week, and we'll leave you to decide the precise degree to which they're related. We're specifying "airline industry" stories, in contrast to just Ryanair stories "in general," to emphasize that these are different from the fake "no frills" PR branding nonsense that Ryanair endlessly pushes into the travel journalism newsstream (e.g. this near self-parody of a CNN story headlined "Ryanair's 5 'cheapest' money-saving schemes"). These are actual news stories, as much as is possible with these guys.

First up, Ryanair's the-customer-is-always-wrong CEO Michael O'Leary just announced a massive expansion of the airline. Ryanair will reportedly purchase over 200 new airplanes from US, Chinese and Russian plane manufacturers, a total that would easily make the airline one of the world's largest. O'Leary is promising that the planes will come at "cheap prices."

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Ryanair Threatens to Remove Toilets from Flights. Yawn.

October 13, 2011 at 4:00 PM | by | Comments (0)

We have to imagine there's some kind of countdown timer in the offices of Irish LCC Ryanair. The clock ticks down second by second, and when the buzzer goes off it's time for the airline's customers-are-there-for-abusing CEO Michael O'Leary to say something outrageous about airline fees or peeing or airline fees for peeing. That way Ryanair can solidify its "no frills" branding, before turning around and—per a BBC expose—"duping customers with hidden fees." Marketing is magic.

Apparently the publicity timer recently hit zero, because O'Leary just gave this grating interview to The Independent. His new proposal is to remove two of the three toilets in every Ryanair Boeing 737-800, and to use the resulting space to install a total of six new seats.

That would allow the airline to stuff 195 passengers into every flight, instead of the 189 to which they're currently limited, and so they claim they're asking Boeing to sign off on the safety issues. Like so many other Ryanair brainstorms, we doubt this will go anywhere.

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Ryanair Brainstorms Imaginative Way to Fine Customers for Buying Tickets

September 16, 2011 at 4:30 PM | by | Comments (0)

Irish LCC Ryanair is notorious for inventing obscure fees that other less innovative airlines - which is to say, airlines that are not driven by hate for their customers - would simply never imagine. Among the most obnoxious is the airline's credit card fee, which is so tangled that even we couldn't avoid it back on a project where we were actively, professionally trying to avoid all fees.

So naturally, Ryanair has taken that exact fee and found a way to make it even more unpleasant. Yeah we know. We were surprised too.

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Ryanair Publicity Stunts Now Just Getting Lazy, Probably Sexist

September 8, 2011 at 2:56 PM | by | Comment (1)

Listen. We're not exactly prudes when it comes to the significant overlap between the world of travel and the world of boobs. In the course of a few months last year we covered very extreme flight attendant nakedness on three different continents, spanning calendars and ads from Australia to Russia to Spain.

We—proudly, with absolutely no shame—had a Naughtiest Flight Attendants 2010 Jaunty. We maintain different sections so we can differentiate between Nude Travel and Naked Travel and Sex Travel, because, hey, those are all different things and we know you demand precision on these issues.

So we can't really get offended by latest Ryanair ad, which pushes cheap tickets to the Bavarian beer festival. The picture is fine—it's just a fraulein showing a hint of cleavage—but the cheap attempt at controversy comes from putting her picture under "See The Frauleins With The Big Jugs." Our problem is that the ad just kind of sucks.

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